Blog by Paul Golding

Whilst working as interim Chief Applications Architect for Motorola mobile services, I pushed hard with the theme of user experience. In my view, it should remain high on the agenda and remains painfully misunderstood.

User experience is closely related to insights into the customer. However, these are real insights based on problems they face, not blanket categories or market segment behaviours. We all know that there's probably a group of users with a name like "Millenials" or whatever, and then we can reel off a list of consumer research generalities about the group: impetuous, ambitious, attention-seeking, gadget lovers, blah de blah.

But, will such archetypal insights lead to break-through innovation in products and services? I seriously doubt it. It tends to server marketing departments best, who will understand well how to create various marketing innovations to appeal to the target audience generally. But, and this is the challenge, most of the generic consumer insights data is similarly available to the competition.

In following a vector of marketing innovation based on such themes, the result is often a constant stick-slip motion of successes and failures in the market based on an increasing "fractalization" of product offerings, to use Geoffrey Moore's description of the life-cycle in a maturing market.

A Ford engineer is supposed to have once said that when prospects examine a car in the showroom, one of the first things they do is open and close the doors. Whether they realise it or not, a lot of the prospects are influenced by the sound of the door.

That is real customer insight and leads to a perspective about the user experience. Who, in product planning, would have considered the sound of the doors as a design criterion? A new vector of innovation is opened up.

Turning to mobiles then, as you're probably not in the car design business, the concept of experience is clearly high on the agenda in Apple. Where else would we hear of such design criteria as "icons so nice that you want to lick them?"

Lack of insight into user experience is why many of the forthcoming application store efforts will fail, especially those run by operators. To copy only the app store part of the "iPhone experience," displays a probable lack of insight. The iPhone experience is a collection of parts, all well executed, that when combined produce a compelling user experience. The device, the device OS, the app store, the app store widget (icon), the ability to update the platform, the iTunes store, the developer community, plus other less tangible factors - the excitement of developing iPhone apps, the fun factor of using the accelerometers, touch screen etc.

All of these produce an "ecosystem" that is necessary to deliver a compelling user experience. Returning to the Ford engineer's insight, I am sure that merely putting sound-reduction tape around the doors would not have been enough to sell the car. We see time and again where companies attempt to copy the success of another, such as Honda's attempt to mimic Toyota's Lexus spin-off, and then failing, probably because they lacked some of the other vital ingredients in the innovation sauce. Whole products, whole experiences are what matter. Innovation, or part of it, needs to be intimately linked to the insights into the user experience. And, as if often the case, a compelling user experience is a complex collection of things done well. After all, if it wasn't, then it would be easy for the competition to copy.

And here we are often blind-sided by another generalism in product and service innovation, which is that simple is often far better than complex. The real thing to be sure of is that you have the right set of simple ideas well executed. Doing the right thing in totality is often very difficult indeed. Don't confuse simple with easy.